THE VALKYRIES
They’re circling overhead
with bayonets of the past
sensing the fear the blood
They’re circling around me
wishing me to fail
because then
then I shall fall into their arms again
Saviours they look to be
Of me
I fall into razor arms ready to cut me till I bleed
Ready to drain me till I die
Because death seems the better place to be Continue reading “The Valkyries by Amber Agha”
Fawn
A nod to nap below a tree — eyelid
an elephant descends, still sees a fawn
so wobbly as she flees. Demon forbids
a chase, indica knees. Tendrils blonde,
he contemplates. Their wave, rebellion,
he close-eyed calculates: Forest frolic
after class, to swath of leaves, vermillion,
bedspread in grass. She’s smoked-out, chronic,
childlike, asleep. His push inside her dreams
so deep. She wakes to nails between her thighs,
a bolt of light in red-rimmed eyes. Her screams,
that seem internalized, deemed dreamed demise.
This game requires patience. The best games do.
The dreams of hunters demons will pursue. Continue reading “2 Poems by Kristin Garth”
i was taught to be pink—
the blushing cheek of a virtuous girl,
or the pearl of her unspoiled innocence.
i was taught to be the color of the rose
lovingly selected for the virgin Continue reading “2 Poems by Lisa L. Weber”
fat ass hot cock ass
thunder thighs
bionic booty
pretty eyes thick thighs
basket ball butt
5th grade child bearing hips
linebacker in a strapless dress
getting chunky
grown woman’s body now
don’t be prancing around the men keep that butt from jiggling in a thin
dress 4 years old perverse booty jiggle
you better hope you can fit into it
buffalo butt
you too big
itty bitty titty committee
you are too skinny
sloppy fat
fat fingers
self-hating well
you ain’t missing no meals I see
don’t make sense to be that heavy
need to push back from the table
eating all natural still fat as hell
talk trash deny food
low key slut shamed
offering lipo make you
feel bad for feeling bad
you can live off your fat don’t need
to eat big arms like your grandmother
don’t be making up a plate of food
of the food she fucking cooked
there are men in this house
man
I thought I imagined the slick stuff
Grand our mothers were
poets and didn’t know it
Soliloquy For The Loner Spectator / Ultimo espectador del mundo is a translation by Cesar Torres from the book “Conciertos Imaginarios” by Camilo T.
[ Brief splendor. The world beheld.
Things falling apart as this man enters]
Spectator: I sit here to watch; one man leaned his soul close to me,
I am here, straw man, bum, getting closer to, perception,
I’m trembling on my seat, trembling seat drifting on high tide,
stroked by the mare, or maybe by a crazy-one; me, slender
who could not stand nor defend his place, see the stars,
see the falling lights of the sky, madly,
witness those words that never had been spoken,
sit here, without relief from the coldest loneliness, you’re here to watch. Continue reading “Soliloquy For The Loner Spectator translated by Cesar Torres”
i.
when pushed to choose, i always fall towards abstraction;
the f/64s would not have liked me very much.
ii.
if you ask for a song,
i will give you song lyrics
written backwards in watercolors.
The City of Dreadful Night is my response to the 1874 poem of the same name by James Thomson which dealt with depression, alienation, suicide and the urban landscape. With these images, I sought to respond to the spaces or penumbra between Thomson’s words; to capture the poem’s feeling of dread, to transmute this to my own setting here in Trinidad and Tobago; to suggest his dread mirrors something of what local marginal communities (LGBTQ, disabled) experience. The range of images in the book includes asemic writing, visuals generated by performing random functions on text, illustrations and photographs. I wanted the multiplicity of media – deployed in response to a source text – to suggest the multiplicity of identity/diversity, all while retaining the dread of Thomson’s poem.
Continue reading “The City of Dreadful Night by Andre Bagoo”
Here is a photograph I never took:
I am holding a woman in my arms
as if it were for the last time.
Her half smile holds a secret.
In the background, the Bay Bridge
is a bodybuilder—outstretched and posing.
when you bond
with the alien
that invaded your beloved’s body
become more maternal
than you could be with your
daughters
who seek comfort in the
luxury of expensive puddings
nocturnal snacks
A set of beliefs about the future (it’s right now)
Can you afford to eat right now? I need to know if you can afford to eat right now we need to know if we can take anything else away from you.
Continue reading “Best Practices For Staying Hydrated by Griffin Ward”
If god is always watching we should give him a good view / He compressed us into a VHS tape that eats itself every million years or so / We look for our rosaries at the bottom of river Styx / all wrapped up in grocery bags because we want to stay weak / the kids you grew up with in the back of the classroom / with snot on their chins / and white eyes because everything is pure / When you were thirteen you ate the world and puked your guts out across December / Until all the snow melted and flooded the places she could have been born / A 1969 blue Chevy Camaro drives down the beach and chews up the ocean underneath / girls cannot survive on saltwater alone Continue reading “3 Poems by Rachel Thorpe”
Mottled brilliance of chameleon leaves,
a concert audience on the horizon,
120 km/h on the crest of a highway hill.
My son loves fall colors.
Brittle gutter leaves under my feet
are your idiotic face, belly mom. Continue reading “Difficult Colours by Jordan Trethewey”
after Grey’s Anatomy S09E02
I cut my body into little suns
– Carrie Lorig
patience is canon—something to spit out,
re-engulf, me, that I may be re-shaped
without heaving muscle, the clamps
anchor my scapula, your lighthouse
done ignoble, instead miraculous
the lawn / Is pressed by unseen feet, and ghosts return /
Gently at twilight, gently go at dawn.
—T.S. Eliot, “To Walter de la Mare”
My father died in our living room.
Continue reading “Ghost Feet, Some Booze, and My Living Room: A Sad Party by Dom Fonce”
But I was preoccupied with
wonder. A cursory ask: is gay-boy
the same as femme, the same as
gender- queer, the same as sharp, then soft,
then wading destitute through
swamps of molasses? I was so
distracted, drowned in the black rush
of mascara in untouched eyelashes.
I know better than to leave a place
And expect to find it
Exactly where I left it
This time, I return home a foreigner Continue reading “Home by Shannon Donaghy”
1
a b c d e f g h i think, therefore i am
a shot of Espresso
2
a shot of Espresso has an i
the cup has an i
the coffee powder an i
so has every coffee granule &
the sugar powder & every sugar crystal &
the water & every covalent bond of water
& every H atom
& every O atom
millennia of shame
bound up in my name
Eve
is tongue-tied
God’s sticky sauce on the spare rib
Adam needn’t wank off every night
not now
not now I’m here named maimed incomplete no cock
Continue reading “My Naming by Eve Black”
In one glance you’re a girl clad in silks,
in another a man in a jumper,
turn my back you’re a farmer,
blink and you’re a hunter,
fetch a pint and you’re a fisherman.
I wake up to a shepherd,
come back from a shift to a carjacker.
I want to be promised
everything.
My hand I am
so wet
the simultaneous breaths
are soaking
everything Continue reading “Everything by Line Toftsø”
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 